Full Plate Enthusiasm

In the book “The 50th Law” by Robert Greene, I read the following passage about the power of urgency to help us become more productive/effective…

We have all had moments of a harsh deadline where you face real pressure to deliver. What happens is our minds snap to attention and we find the necessary energy because we have to. We pay attention to details that normally elude us because they might spell the difference between success and failure, life and death. We are surprised at how inventive we become. These moments show us a mental power that is generally untapped. If only we could have this every day!

True opportunists do not require urgent, stressful circumstances to become alert and inventive. They operate this way on a daily basis. They channel their aggressive energy into hunting down possibilities for expansion in anything/everything. With this enlarged notion of opportunity, they create more of it in their lives and gain great power

Which leads me to my message today about the power of “full plate enthusiasm”…

3 Responses to Full Plate Enthusiasm

This update really hits close to home for me and I would like to add a bit of insight into this if you will permit me.

In my past corporate careers (yes I have had a few 🙂 ), I have been forced into situations where I had to make aggressive deadlines and I would literally work days on end with close to no sleep. Looking back I have no idea how I did it, but I would survive on 2-4 hours sleep and get up and do it all over again.

The one thing I got out of it was a huge satisfaction of meeting the deadlines, in fact, I became known as the person in the office who could be depended upon and basically if Carl couldn’t do it then it wasn’t a realistic deadline.

One of my corporate jobs took me on an 8-month journey of crazy deadlines, working close to 7 days a week and averaging 4 hours sleep each night. I was at the top of my game and was what I thought in good physical and mental shape.

One morning I awoke and life changed forever, I was paralyzed from my neck down. It came to be it was only temporary (lasted 8-10 hours). Throughout the next weeks of probing, testing it was suspected I suffered a slight stroke but the findings weren’t conclusive so they gave my condition a fancy name and life went on.

One of the main contributing factors to my condition was physical and mental exhaustion and in the coming months and years I came to think the same as your message – I was at the top of my game working crazy hours and feeling invisible – I often wondered why couldn’t I be like this all the time. What makes us tick and operate so well under this intense pressure.

The end result is under pressure we have two choices in todays corporate setting – either you get the job done no matter what pressures are upon you or you step aside as there are dozens of people out there that will gladly take your place. They might not do as good of a job as you would but they will do it.

In my opinion you are either left completing your deadline and feeling like you are unstoppable or missing the deadline and being heckled by the corporate crowd. Fear of failure and fear of social heckling controls the outcome in most cases.

You have to take on the mindset of a winner at all times and there will be times for short-term situations where you will have to go on very little sleep but for the long-term you need to balance your mental and physical teeter-totter really well for long term personal growth and not long-term ailments which will affect you for the rest of your life.Carl recently posted..What are the Personal Performance Tools Within You?Twitter: carlt

First of all, very glad to hear it was temporary and you came out of the situation with your health still relatively ok. Wow that must have been super scary.

And even though I took a strong stance in this blog post as a proponent of committing to deadlines in order to push yourself, I ALSO agree with your comments about long term balance.

A blog post from a LONG time ago, I talked about Energy Management and some of the work of Tony Schwartz. He has some eye opening things to say about working hard/smart AND taking breaks to decompress…